May 20, 2026
The S-List Scandal
The Letter S, by Donald Knuth [pdf]
Math legend spent days obsessing over one letter—and commenters are losing it
TLDR: Donald Knuth wrote a serious paper about why the letter S is surprisingly hard to design for printing, after spending days wrestling with it. Commenters turned that into comedy gold, joking about “more different S” while also praising him as a lovable perfectionist and legend.
A dry old paper about the letter S somehow turned into a full-on comment-section lovefest, roast session, and meme factory. The setup is already delicious: computer science legend Donald Knuth admits that while 25 letters were manageable, one letter broke his brain. Not X, not Q—just humble, slippery little S. He spent three days and nights trying to define the “proper” S for modern printing, turning what sounds like a basic shape into a grand mathematical quest.
And the community absolutely pounced. The runaway funniest reaction came from one reader who said they’d just spent half an hour reading a very detailed version of “draw an S; next draw a more different S.” That pretty much became the thread’s unofficial slogan. Another commenter revived the most devastatingly simple critique imaginable: Knuth’s wife allegedly looked at his early attempts and asked, “Why don’t you make them S shaped?” Honestly? Brutal. Iconic. Hard to recover from.
Still, the overall mood wasn’t mockery so much as affectionate awe. Several commenters basically declared Knuth a national treasure, marveling that a genius would pour this much energy into making printed letters look right. Others dropped links to books and lectures, turning the thread into a mini fan club for typography nerds. So yes, the article is about the mathematics of a letter—but the real entertainment is watching the internet swing between “this is absurd” and “this man is a treasure.”
Key Points
- •Knuth wrote the paper to explain the mathematics he believed underlies the design of a proper printed capital S.
- •The article presents the problem of type design as a digital task grounded in discrete mathematics and computer science rather than traditional metal-type methods.
- •Knuth developed and used METAFONT as a computer system and language for designing letter shapes mathematically.
- •A practical motivation for the work was reproducing the appearance of an earlier hot-lead typeset edition of one of Knuth’s books using modern methods.
- •The excerpt places Knuth’s work in historical context by discussing Francesco Torniello’s 1517 geometric construction of the letter S.